Election Profile: Pat Toomey

Dogged by his past on Wall Street, Pat Toomey wants to slash spending.

September 25, 2010|By Colby Itkowitz, CALL WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — — Pat Toomey tugs at a rubber band, pulling it taut and then letting it fall back into shape.

The topic before him is derivatives, a dirty word associated with the nation's economic collapse that now appears in front of Toomey's name in nearly every one of the Democrats' attacks.

Toomey rarely becomes flustered; playing with the rubber band is the only indication that it's an unwelcome topic. He puts it down as soon as the conversation moves away from derivatives. Toomey traded derivatives for just six years on Wall Street before spending a year in Hong Kong and then moving to Allentown, and a new life as a tavern owner-turned-U.S. congressman.

Now Toomey, a hard-line fiscal conservative, is running for the U.S. Senate in moderate Pennsylvania. He doesn't brag about his Wall Street career but is unapologetic about his beliefs that government shouldn't meddle so much in the financial sector and should scale back spending.

Toomey would like Pennsylvania voters to know him as a small-business owner, a man who built and ran restaurants with his family in Allentown for years before his frustration with government policies persuaded him to make a run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998.

In two interviews — one in an RV between campaign stops in Harrisburg and Tamaqua and another over a plate of pot stickers at a TGIFriday in Allentown — Toomey uncorked a strong brew of conservative fiscal philosophy that developed when he was a teenager and was strengthened during his years as a trader, bar owner, congressman and director of a Washington think tank.

He believes government regulations should be minimal and taxes — for people and corporations — should be low. He's been a vocal advocate for allowing people to invest their Social Security in the market; he even romanced his future wife on that position when they were dating.

"The fundamental idea at the heart of it is that economic freedom is the precondition for prosperity," Toomey said. "When people are free to innovate, to be entrepreneurial, to be creative, that is the source of prosperity."

His views are starkly different from those of his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Delaware County. They embody a new breed of Republican, the kind that can force moderates like U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter to leave the party and spur voters to choose a novice conservative pundit over a moderate congressman in the recent Delaware primary.

As a congressman representing the Lehigh Valley for six years, Toomey led a "conservative rebellion" by blocking a spending measure he believed was too costly. As a senator, he'd be more likely to hold up legislation he found fiscally irresponsible than roll over to appease the Republican leadership. He's the kind of candidate who in other election years may have scared the GOP in a state like Pennsylvania, which went handily for Democrats in the last two presidential elections.

Timing and strategy have landed the once conservative fringe candidate as a party favorite.

Democrats want Toomey's former career to be the giant red bull's-eye on his back.

It comes up frequently on the campaign trail. As he wrapped up an event in Lebanon during a four-day sweep through Pennsylvania last month, Toomey sidestepped a protester who followed him around with a sign that said: "Trillionaires for Toomey. Thank You for my Third Yacht. Derivatives Forever."

It is undeniable that Toomey's campaign is backed heavily by Wall Street interests. He received three-quarters of a million dollars from financial industry interests between February and June.

The financial world shares Toomey's view of government separation from business. That philosophy was reinforced for Toomey when he was working in Hong Kong for a financial advisory firm to determine whether southeast Asian countries could support their own merchant banks. Toomey concluded that government intervention in the financial markets in those countries made opening banks there unappealing.

"I was seeing pretty close up which economies were succeeding and which ones weren't, and there is an unmistakable correlation," Toomey said. "Those that are heavily regulated and centrally controlled underperform. And those like Hong Kong, where there is regulation but it is sensible, they thrive."

After Toomey's year abroad, the bank he worked for in New York City, Morgan Grenfell, was acquired by Deutsche Bank, and Toomey's role was going to change. Not yet 30, Toomey traded in the fast-paced finance world to run restaurants in Allentown.

Of all the political attacks against him, Toomey felt it personally when Sestak accused him of not being an actual small-business owner, citing a sworn deposition in which Toomey described himself as a "hands-off owner."